Mail Order Bride 22 Book Boxed set: 22 Brides Ride West :CLEAN Western Historical Romance Series Bundle

by Faye Sonja

  After Luanna's term on bed rest had finished, it was Nicolas' turn to experience sleepless nights. Clancy had been harassing him non-stop, and keeping the matter from Luanna was beginning to take its toll.

  "What are my options?" he thought, turning over on his pillow, trying to find a position where it may have been comfortable to sleep. "I can't tell her about Clancy...And I can't give in to his demands. I can't very well do what he is asking of me, can I?"

  He wondered.

  In his darkest moments his thoughts wandered...he began to doubt that the new life he'd made in Gold Creek was anything but just a fantasy. He wondered if he was only pretending. Sooner or later your past always catches up with you. Maybe what Clancy was saying was the truth. At heart, Nicolas belonged on the land, on the run. Not cooped up in a tiny mining town, in the middle of nowhere, working as a school teacher.

  But there was Luanna. She needed him. He’d made a vow to her, and that was more important than anything. He couldn’t just leave her – that would be unforgivable.

  * * *

  Luanna had no sense of sound, but despite her handicap, and her occasional absentmindedness, she was finely attuned to the moods of others. Another side effect of having a sensitive, creative personality. And she could tell something was wrong with Nicolas. Far from his usual open, affable self, he seemed to have become withdrawn into himself. He was snappier than usual, and any time Luanna tried to ask him what was wrong he only brushed her off, tried to explain that nothing was wrong.

  “It’s just this time of the school year, it’s very tiring,” he said, one night. “The older students have their exams coming up and there is a lot of extra work to teach and grade.”

  Luanna was sympathetic. “I know it can be stressful for you. You have a lot to deal with down at the school. All the children love you, though," she said, placing a hand on his arm. "I'm sure they know you're doing your best."

  He took a sip of his tea and nodded. "Yes, I'm sure they do. I just don't want to let any of them down."

  "I understand." Luanna was quiet for a moment, wondering if she should press any further. "Are you sure it's nothing else?"

  He smiled at her briefly, but the smile stopped at the corners of his mouth, not reaching his eyes. "I'm sure there's nothing else. What else would be wrong?"

  Luanna smiled and dropped it. But she had to wonder. She still hadn't told Nicolas that she'd found his secret box of items from his past. She still wasn't sure about how to broach the subject, if it was something he really didn't want to talk about. Or if there was something dangerous lurking in his past, that she might accidentally unearth by speaking about it.

  But with his mood becoming more and more withdrawn, Luanna worried that it had something to do with what she'd discovered in that box. She'd only ever known one side of Nicolas - the quiet, diligent schoolteacher. But what she'd found in that box had shown her a different side.

  She watched Nicolas pick up his bag full of books and teaching materials as he straightened his clean, tailored jacket and his formal hat. She imagined what he may have looked like before, in his dusty jacket, his Stetson hat and his cowboy boots. How could the two men be the same person? Strange in a way, but she could imagine it. Maybe someone with a less vivid imagination would be shocked to discover his wild side, wouldn't know how to reconcile the two.

  But Luanna had no problem doing so. She knew people were complex, that they could have two sides, a side they showed publicly, and one they kept private. She knew a little of suppressing her true nature. Here she was in Gold Creek, trying to be the perfect, sensible wife, when really she had her own wild spirit that she was hiding.

  So she understood. And she longed to tell her husband that she understood, that he could talk to her about it. No matter how bad it was she wouldn't be shocked, or think any less of him.

  "Is that what he is afraid of?" she wondered, as she watched Nicolas leave down the path, waving to her as he went. "Does he worry that I will judge him, not be able to see past it? I know that people can change, and have things in their past that they might regret." Part of her was a little hurt he wouldn't open up his heart to her, to show her the deepest, darkest parts of his past. In a way it was like he didn't trust her.

  She sighed. "Perhaps he is simply trying to protect me."

  She continued to fold her laundry as she mulled over the matter. "He may be trying to keep me safe, but in a marriage, we need to be open with one another. Something is clearly bothering him recently, and if it has something to do with his past then I want to know about it." She put down the sheet she was folding and made a firm decision.

  "This has gone on long enough. Tonight, when Nicolas gets home, I will tell him what I found in that box, and we will finally talk about it."

  * * *

  "I can't believe you opened that box!"

  "I'm sorry," Luanna exclaimed. "I didn't realize that in a marriage we still kept separate things that the other isn't supposed to look at."

  Nicolas was pacing back and forth, running a hand through his hair. "It's not like that. Some things are allowed to remain private, you know."

  He had his back to Luanna, so she couldn't tell what he was saying. "Pardon? Nicolas, you need to turn to speak to me, remember?"

  "Of course I remember!" he snapped, and turned back towards her. He saw the look on her face, how upset she was. "I'm sorry," he said immediately. "I didn't mean to snap about that."

  But Luanna was already hitching up the length of her skirt, ready to run from the room. She couldn't believe that Nicolas could be so snappy with her, especially about her handicap.

  "Luanna where are you going?"

  "I don't want to speak to you."

  "Please, we can't just have a fight like this, and have you run away. We need to talk about it, sort it out."

  "I should be the one who is mad at you, not the other way around," she exclaimed. "You're angry about me looking in the box, but what about what I found in it? All those things you have kept hidden from me?"

  "I didn't...hide them from you," he tried to explain. "At least, not because I was trying to deceive you."

  "Really?" she asked. "Because it feels as though you were trying to deceive me. Trying to trick me into thinking you're a different man to who you really are. Now I know what your character really entails."

  "I didn't trick you, Luanna!"

  "What would you can it then, pretending to be something you're not?"

  He continued to pace, muttering, "You're one to talk."

  "What did you say?" Luanna asked, genuinely not catching what Nicolas said. She was starting to get frustrated that he wouldn't stay still, as if he didn't want her to see what he was saying. "If you have something to tell me, you need to look at me."

  "I'm sorry, I wasn’t turning away from you deliberately."

  "It seemed like you were." The hurt dripped from her voice. "So what did you say, just now, when I couldn't see your lips."

  "I said that I'm not the only one to be pretending that I'm someone I'm not."

  Luanna was genuinely baffled about what he meant. "Are you talking about me?" she asked, frowning. She took a step backwards when he nodded. "What are you talking about? I didn't deceive you before we met! If you're talking about not mentioning my deafness, that was Rosella's omission, not mine."

  "I'm not talking about that," he said, still pacing, but remembering to stand still with his face towards Luanna when he was speaking.

  "What are you talking about then? I haven't pretended to be something I'm not..." But as she spoke she trailed off and dropped the arms that had been fixed on her hips. She had the sinking feeling that she did know what he was talking about. She'd been feeling like an imposter for a long time, trying to be someone she wasn't: the calm, sensible, perfect wife that Nicolas wanted.

  But he knew she wasn't those things. It was clear now. She blushed red as she realized that he had seen through her all along.

  He kept his head down, and
even though his lips were partially hidden, Luanna could see that he wasn't talking, that he didn't want to speak the words out loud.

  "I see," she said. "I am a huge disappointment to you."

  He lifted his head back up, his sandy-blonde hair falling into his eyes. "You're not a disappointment, Luanna." His voice was gentle, but there was an air of frustration to what he was saying. “Just...a lot to handle at times.”

  “A lot to handle?” Her eyes were wide. “Well, I’m sorry I am so difficult to ‘handle’! I am a person, though, not a piece of a livestock. I'm not one of your students, Nicolas. You don't need to 'handle' me." This time she really did flee from the room, slamming the door as she went.

  Nicolas was left alone, his head still bowed. Nothing had gone how he'd wanted it to. All that fighting, and they hadn't even sorted out the issue of the tin box. He sat down and placed his head in his hands. "So Luanna knows everything..." he thought. With sorrow, he worried how much worse this made things. Instead of feeling relief that his secret was out, and that he could share it with his wife, he was worried about her safety. Better for her to remain ignorant, in case Clancy ever came knocking for him. Then she could claim she knew nothing, and be telling the truth.

  "This knowledge puts her in danger," he thought. "Now I really need to do something. Either find the money, or take more drastic action. The time for deliberating has come to an end. I need to act, and act fast."

  * * *

  "I do love her wild ways, deep down. But sometimes I think she would be better off without me, in some ways..." he thought, on one particularly dark night. "Maybe she deserves someone better than a man who is simply pretending. She thinks she's married to this simple school teacher, and in a way I feel as though I am deceiving her. If she really knew who I was she would hate me. Maybe she would take off in the middle of the night, return to Chicago. I could hardly blame her."

  He had to stop this way of thinking. He was beginning to remind himself of Luanna, the way her imagination ran away from her, worrying that the worst might happen. There's risk with everything in life, but it's better to have faith and hope in God, rather than worrying your life away, fretting about things you can't control. He didn't think Luanna would really leave him, any more than he would leave her. But late nights and deep worries could lead to these kinds of tricks of the imagination.

  He decided to get up and warm some milk, hoping that it might help him to sleep. Or at least calm him down a little. "Then it will be time to sleep. In the morning things will look different," he thought, throwing the covers off.

  As he heated the milk over the stove, he began to feel his nerves calming already. "Why do troubles always seem worse at night time?" he wondered out loud, searching through the pantry for a cup. The only light he had to guide him was the moonlight outside, and he accidentally knocked over a stack of cups as he fumbled his way in the dark. His instinct was to cringe, and to hope that the noise hadn't woken Luanna up. Then he remembered that the noise would not disturb her, and he was glad she would at least get a peaceful sleep.

  As he bent down to pick up the pile of cups he thought he heard the sound of sticks moving, cracking, outside the window. He paused for a second, not making a move, to see if the noise returned.

  "Perhaps it's just a bird...maybe one of the chickens has escaped again. Maybe Luanna left the gate open again."

  As he heard the noise again, he began to really hope that it was just a chicken out there. He never thought he'd be hoping that Luanna had left the gate open, but right then an escaped chicken seemed like a blessing compared to what he feared might be out there.

  The noise was too loud for chicken feet. This was a heavy footstep. A human footstep.

  Nicolas remained bent down, his heartbeat almost stopped as he kept listening for the noise.

  He couldn't stay bent down there forever, though. He could hear the milk boiling over on the stove, and he knew that he had given himself away. If there was someone outside the window, then they knew he was there. There was a clear view into the kitchen, and Nicolas had made such a commotion when he'd knocked the cups over that there was no doubt he was at home.

  Besides, he wasn't a coward. He stood up and faced up to whatever it was there.

  Staring back at him through the window was Clancy.

  "Time's up, Nicky."

  * * *

  8

  A Revelation

  -

  -

  -

  -

  -

  -

  -

  “ No. They were real. Someone

  wanted to marry her,”

  .

  Luanna woke up the next morning to an empty house. Thinking that Nicolas had simply left early to prepare for his lessons for the day, she didn't think too much of it, and happily trotted into the kitchen, intending to make herself a cup of hot cocoa. It was an unusually cold day for California, and for a moment Luanna was reminded of home, which made her extra happy in a way that surprised her.

  "Perhaps I am getting a little homesick," she thought, chuckling to herself. She never thought she'd be homesick for Chicago, or its cool weather. She reached down into the pantry for a cup and stopped in surprise when she saw all the cups knocked over onto the floor.

  "Oh, Nicolas..." she said out loud, tutting to herself as she tidied them up. "He must have been in such a hurry that he didn't even notice he'd made such a terrible mess."

  She stood up and went over the stove, stopping dead in her tracks when she noticed the fire was on, and there was a burnt out pot in it. She realized she could smell burning metal, and something else. Walking closer she peered into it, only to find dried up, burnt milk inside, with the bottom totally blackened and a hole beginning to burn through the bottom.

  "Oh, bother!" she exclaimed, feeling annoyed. "What a waste of a perfectly good pan. What a terrible mess. How could Nicolas have been in such a rush that he could leave the pot burning like this? It seems like something I would do..."

  She reached down and turned the fire off. But there was something odd about the scene, something that was troubling her. The milk was totally burned and evaporated, and the hole in the bottom of the pan could only have been made if the milk had been boiling for a long time.

  "What time did he leave this morning?" she wondered, starting to get worried. "It's really not like Nicolas to leave things in such a state. He is usually so careful and conscientious. Unlike me - this is the kind of mess I would leave, if I got distracted by something. But Nicolas is not absentminded like I am..."

  Something was wrong, she knew it.

  Without bothering to tidy the mess, and forgetting to even grab her bonnet and gloves, she took off out the door and began to run down towards the school house. She had to find out if her husband had turned up for work that day.

  * * *

  She flew in through the doors of Gold Creek School to find twenty students sitting at their desks, staring forward at nothing. Luanna couldn't hear them, but she could see their lips moving and knew they were becoming restless, talking and gossiping amongst each other. She knew they wouldn't have been behaving like that if Nicolas was present, or if he'd just stepped out for a minute.

  No, he hadn't turned up for the day. That was obvious.

  Luanna's heart began to race as she looked around the room. With so many mouths moving, so many children trying to get her attention, she was overwhelmed, not knowing who to focus on first. The largest boy in the class, a red headed boy called Samuel, waved at her, trying to get her attention.

  "Mrs. Williamson?" he was calling out.

  She nodded and began to walk towards him. "Have you seen Mr. Williamson this morning?" she asked, frantically.

  Samuel shook his head. "He didn't turn up, we're all just waiting for him." Luanna had to concentrate hard to make out what he was saying. Her mind was already racing with a dozen images of what could have happened.

  "Maybe he's had an accident," she thought. "Ma
ybe he's laying somewhere, unconscious, with no one to help him."

  But that didn't make sense. The abandoned pot of milk. The mess in the kitchen. That didn't point to an accident. That pointed to him deciding to make a run for it in the middle of the night. She began to feel her legs go from under her, and she reached around desperately for a chair, with the students crowding around trying to help her. They called out to her, asked if she was alright, but she couldn't hear them, and she didn't answer them.

  But she was not alright. She rested her head forward on a desk and thought her darkest thought. "My husband has left me in the middle of the night, and now I am all alone."

  She felt a hand on her shoulder, and it was one of the students, a young girl, trying to get her attention. "What's wrong? What's happened to Mr. Williamson?"

  Luanna shook her head and tried to keep her thoughts straight. "Nothing, I'm sure he's fine." She looked around at the classroom full of distressed looking children. She hadn't meant to make them worry, and she wanted to reassure them all that things were normal. Forcing a smile to her face, she pulled herself up and beamed at the class.

  "There's nothing to worry about," she said in her calmest voice. "Mr. Williamson is just not very well today." She saw their frowns, and the way they turned to each other to whisper. Even though she couldn't hear Luanna could tell they didn't believe her. She didn't blame them - the way she'd flown into the schoolhouse, it was clear that everything was far from okay. But they were just children. Luanna had a responsibility towards them now. If Nicolas really had run off, then it was down to her to take care of his classroom.

  All the students’ little faces looked up at her expectantly. She wondered if she should just send them home for the day. But that would only cause more concern, and every single one of them would go home with gossip, about what had happened to Mr. Williamson and his wife. Until Luanna knew exactly what had happened she wanted things to appear as normal as possible.